US aims to hand over control of global legal and economic systems to its largest corporations

The TPP, TTIP & TISA will lock in investor rights, ensuring corporations can run wild with little government regulation or impingement.

No 1482 Posted by fw, October 18, 2015

“The basic idea is the construction of a new grand enclosure, and to put inside this grand enclosure the United States, 51 other countries, 1.6 billion people, and two-thirds of global GDP; to integrate Latin America away from Brazil and towards the United States; to integrate Southeast Asia away from China and towards United States; and to integrate Western Europe pulling it away from Eurasia as a whole and towards the Atlantic.” —Julian Assange, Editor in Chief, WikiLeaks —

“What is so scary about this is that corporations want to lock in their power. So they not only want increased power, but they want to make it impossible for sovereign governments to reverse the changes which are going to give them power. —Matt Kennard, Centre for Investigative Journalism

“These treaties will have huge implications for literally almost every critical issue that an individual citizen or community would care about – health, education, the environment, privacy, and access to medicines. I mean the list could go on. If a protest affects their profits they can sue. If laws affect their profits they can sue. If new regulations might impact where or what they want to do with their money, they can sue.” —Claire Provost, Centre for Investigative Journalism

The above quotes are excerpted from a video released by the WikiLeaks Channel.

If you’re not worried about the three pending US-led trade agreements, you should be. This post is one more in a continuing series on US strategies to rule the world – economically, politically, and militarily. We can’t let that happen. We must stop Harper, Trudeau, and Mulcair from approving the TPP, as well as the other trade agreements in the pipeline.

Watch the embedded 8:22-minute video below, followed by the complete transcript. (Note: This video features an auto-generated transcript to accompany the images; it’s full of errors so just ignore it).

John Pilger, Investigative Journalist — This is something enormous. It is about a final control, and it’s the United States saying “There may be another power in the world but we will be the ultimate power.”

John Hilary, Executive Director, War on Want — Quite explicitly the US and the EU is saying that they want these new trade agreements to form the blueprint, the template for all future trade deals. And that means they’re rewriting the rules of the global economy. And that means for everybody.

Narrator — Once signed, it is cementing key parts of the US government’s plan to create a new global block that will ensure the dominance of its largest companies. And to understand why we need to go back to the 1950s.

Narrator — After the Second World War the United States accounted for half of the world’s economy. Its influence was unmatched by any country and it was able to write the only rules of international trade to its advantage. The World Trade Organization was created in this context and the US dictated rules that favored American business. But as economies like China and India joined the WTO it became a more democratized arena, and the US found harder to control its decision-making.

John Pilger — At the WTO and it’s Doha rounds, India spoke up and Brazil spoke up, and the US lost control.

Pascal Lamy, WTO Chief – “It is no use beating around the bush. This meeting has collapsed.”

John Pilger – We only found out when WikiLeaks was able to leak parts of them.

John Hilary — What’s interesting is when you look across all of these deals whether it be TTIP, TPP, or TISA, China is excluded but also Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa — they’re all excluded because those are the emerging economies.

Matt Kennard, Centre for Investigative Journalism — What is not often understood is that these agreements are part of the geopolitical war. This is a new war which is taking place within the United States and China. The United States is very scared of the rise of China so it has moved to militarily encircle it through what is called the pivot to Asia. And now it’s moving on to doing that economically.

Julian Assange, Editor in Chief, WikiLeaks — The basic idea, which comes across from reading US strategy papers, is the construction of a new grand enclosure; and to put inside this grand enclosure the United States, 51 other countries, 1.6 billion people, and two-thirds of global GDP; to integrate Latin America away from Brazil and towards the United States; to integrate Southeast Asia away from China and towards United States; and to integrate Western Europe pulling it away from Eurasia as a whole and towards the Atlantic.

Narrator – Of the three big T’s, WikiLeaks has revealed four chapters of the TPP which affects 12 countries in the Americas and Southeast Asia; we also obtained and released the core text to TISA, which affects 52 countries including the EU. But nearly all of TTIP is still secret.

John Hilary — Nobody knows about what’s being negotiated in our name. So you have these far-reaching deals which are going to completely change the face of our economies and our societies. And yet even elected parliamentarians know nothing about it.

Narrator — The world’s biggest corporations don’t have the same problem. They have been receiving VIP access from day one and have had abundant influence in the negotiations.

John Pilger – People, the likes of you and I, are excluded; governments, to a great extent, are excluded. Those who are included are the multinational corporations.

Matt Kennard — These agreements are basically corporate ownership agreements. The funny thing about free trade agreements, as we understand them, is they often have nothing to do with trade in the sense of the mutual lowering of tariffs. What they are about is enshrining an investor rights’ regime in their respective countries and ensuring corporations can run wild in their respective economies with very, very little regulation or impingement by government or authorities.

Claire Provost, Centre for Investigative Journalism — These treaties will have huge implications for literally almost every critical issue that an individual citizen or community would care about – health, education, the environment, privacy, and access to medicines. I mean the list could go on.

Narrator — One of them was most criticized aspects is a system called the Investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS. It’s a secretive international tribunal that allows companies to sue states over virtually anything that they can claim affects their investment.

Claire Provost – If a protest affects their profits they can sue. If laws affect their profits they can sue. If new regulations might impact where or what they want to do with their money, they can sue.

John Hilary — This is a new power, which will be handed over to US corporations to sue the governments of Europe in a parallel judicial system which is available to them alone. So people have no access to it. Domestic firms have no access to it. Governments have no access to it. It’s just the foreign investors, in this case US corporations.

Narrator — Based on ISDS history, critics argue that European state sovereignty and democracy are at serious risk. Previous lawsuits include Swedish company Vattenfall suing the German state for 3.7 billion dollars for phasing out nuclear energy; British American Tobacco sued Australia for passing a law limiting cigarette advertising; the French company Veolia sued Egypt for raising the minimum wage.

Matt Kennard — What is so scary about this is that corporations want to lock in their power. So they not only want increased power, but they want to make it impossible for sovereign governments to reverse the changes which are going to give them power. So, for example, with TTIP, it if it passes, with ISDS in it, the privatization of the National Health Service, which is happening in the UK, can never be reversed.

John Pilger – What is democratic about an enormous imposition of power on countries whose citizens have no way of knowing what’s going on, of debating it, or influencing their government in its decision? That’s anti-democratic.

Julian Assange — The history of these agreements shows that they’re very difficult to change unless people can see what’s in them. And that’s why they’re kept secret. Because when the contents are revealed it generates an opposition.

Narrator — WikiLeaks has had considerable success delaying the TPP and opening up the debate around it and the TISA by releasing the secret draft X. Our publication of an earlier proposed US-EU agreement, the ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement], killed it entirely.